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Three Online Resources and a Podcast to Check Out This Week

Some of the best things I learn about come from the Monthly Marketing Bundle members on our strategy calls each month. You might find these resources perfect for a project or problem you’re working on.

Make your professional pieces look more professional

Grammarly.com is a website that helps you with your spelling and grammar. I just went to it this week when I was writing a blog post. I remembered Tracy mentioning it in a past MMB strategy call and what a difference it made for her. She used it to help her make her documents look polished and professional. Once you download it, help is on the way!

Here’s an example of how it works.

You can see that when I started writing this blog post, Grammarly alarmed me that something was amiss about the way I’d used the word members by highlighting it. When I clicked on the red, underlined word, it showed me what it thought I needed to do and that was to add a comma. Brilliant!

It’s also showing up when I write my Facebook posts or leave comments. Who has time to study grammar as much as we need to? I’m all for getting help. You might want to check this out. It’s free although they have a premium version. And caution. it can’t always read your mind so you’re free to disagree with some of the suggestions it comes up with.

When shoes aren’t so fun anymore, there’s hosiery

One of the pieces I wrote this month for MMB members to use was about shoes. It was a Q&A tip sheet meant to guide clients about shoes and then to ultimately inspire them to hire you to purge shoes that aren’t working and help purchase shoes that will. I asked the MMB members if any of them were having shoe problems that we could add to the tip sheet. As you might expect, the answer was yes! As a solution for women who used to wear alluring high heels with sexy cocktail dresses but are now finding them painful to wear, I suggested trying patterned hosiery.

Marion asked, “Brenda, where do you go for hosiery?”

I shared a few of my resources and then soon someone brought up Barenecessities.com. Marion went online and reported to us that you could purchase hosiery there by Wolford, DKNY, Berkshire, Spanx, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Hue, Hanes, and more. What a selection! We were all excited about getting off the call and enlisting hosiery to make more of a style statement for us. And of course, we’ll pass this on to our clients and maybe shop with them online, shoulder to shoulder in front of their computer screen, for their needs.

Playing with words

In the speech outline in this month’s bundle, I included a list of style words as part of an exercise that could be used in a workshop meant to inspire participants to plan for the new year and nurture themselves…which of course would include hiring you to help them update their style! When I looked at the words I suggested that a quick and easy New Year’s card could be an oversized postcard with a list of words across it and a message like, “What do you want to express about yourself in 2018?” To make it look pretty, Google “word collage” and you’ll find several online resources that can help you do that if this is up your alley.

For inspiration, listen to How I Built This podcasts

I’m in my car quite a bit commuting from Sonoma to my clients. Recently I heard about the podcast called How I Built This with Guy Raz. Wow, is that ever a goldmine of inspiration! It’s an NPR podcast about entrepreneurs, innovators, and idealists and the brands they built while following their passion. Here are a few brands Guy Raz has interviewed the founders of that you might be familiar with:

Tom’s Shoes

Spanx

Clif Bar

Southwest Airlines

Instagram

Zumba

Warby Parker

Zappos

Kate Spade

Crate & Barrel

Kendra Scott

It’s so fascinating to hear about what inspired them, the problems they wanted to solve, and the things they went through to get there. To say one of these dreamer’s story is a thriller is not overstating it! Keep your seatbelt fastened!

Hope you’re having fun in your business! If marketing and coming up with content is hard for you, check out the Monthly Marketing Bundle program where content meets community. We sure have a lot of fun making running your business a lot easier!